Reihen
12k is very happy to welcome Uwe Zahn, aka Arovane, to the roster. Arovane, a well-respected artist in the field, hailing from within the German countryside, has been active since the early 2000s beginning with releases on City Centre Offices and DIN in the heyday of the IDM and microsound years. He has since gone on to release work with n5MD, Pure Magnetik, and A Strangely Isolated Place, among others. With Reihen he takes his characteristic pointillist synthetic structures and impeccable sound…
Five Wooden Frames
*2023 stock* Five Wooden Frames marks the return of Italian artist Giueppe Ielasi to 12k after his captivating polyrhythmic explorations on Aix (12k1051, 2009). He completely abandoned the guitar in the mid 2000’s to explore minimal electro-acoustic abstractions (see his releases on his own Senufo Editions) or rhythmic and groove-based music (see his Stunt series, the Inventing Masks project, and Aix and Tools on 12k).
Once again, however, the guitar has become his main focus, both as an instrum…
Salt Og Vind
*2023 stock* With Salt og Vind Pjusk retums from an eight year album hiatus. This release is also the first seeing Pjusk as a solo project consisting of Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik. Salt og Vind (Salt and Wind) is, not surprisingly, about the forces of nature and the contrast between the volatile and the existing. In a wider sense it is about man’s inability or struggle to grasp the eternal and instead seek temporary fulfillment.
Salt og Vind is Pjusk’s 4th album for 12k and comes in with an urgency a…
Windy Weather Always Makes Me Think Of You
*2023 stock* Tomasz Bednarczyk makes a long-awaited return to 12k after his 2009 debut Let’s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow (12k1055, 2009) and a couple of follow-up releases on Australia’s Room40. On Windy Weather Always Makes Me Think Of You Bednarczyk has collected sounds via a smartphone dictaphone and Sony field recorder over the past 10 years with a goal to transform all gathered recordings into new, multilayered harmonies. Field recordings come from voyages around the globe and originally …
Stella Epoca
*2023 stock* Stella Epoca references star time and moving into a new age. The ideas of sky maps and planetary frequencies were the inspirations behind Sawako’s dreamlike sounds. She references orbits, sound waves and light that shower the earth and all living things in ephemeral encounters of sparkle and resonance. Sawako’s sound has always been fragile and amorphous. Watercolor paint sublimating and fading. Here she collapses eight years of memories and records into layers of sounds intended to…
The Shining Space
Franco-Argentinian composer Daniel Teruggi follows in the footsteps of the Paris-based GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musicale) and their illustrious founders Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Francois Bayle, representing the next generation of eletroacoustic explorers. 'The Shining Space' includes works written between 1997 and 1999 and each composition uses a single instrument; piano, electric guitar, voice, etc, as original sound source which is then transformed by the GRM's own processing tools (…
Quatre Vingts
Both a jazz drummer and ethnomusicologist, Jean Schwarz offers a unique vision that expands upon Luc Ferrari’s imagined Presque Rien environments and the tweaked rhythmic workouts of Bernard Parmegiani’s Pop’eclectic series of jazz collages. Throughout, Schwarz incorporates extensive usage of field recording, cyclic minimalist rhythm beds and the slow-moving resonances of electronic tone textures, playing with the sounds of French cafe musette, soulful jazz, and expansive audio vistas of desolat…
Makinak - Capriccio
Composed in the Celia records studio, December 1993, and January 1994. Commissioned by INA grm. As per Jean Schwarz's own words “At the very beginning, there was rhythm”... Rhythm never stopped to be among the heart of all kinds of musical forms, such as traditional, non-european, jazz, occidental, experimental and electroacoustic styles. Each machine produces its own rhythm. The purpose of the piece is to orchestrate and play with rhythms of different machines as varied as possible in order to …
Hide Behind The Silence EP 1
Vladislav Delay presents Hide Behind The Silence EP 1 - 5, a series of five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton". Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops b…
No Mathematics
Hailing from Geel, Jef Mertens has been researching, documenting and subtly exploring the experimental music scene in Belgium and beyond for the better part of two decades. As a filmmaker, he’s dug deep in the realm of Flemish primitive fringe (Dronevolk) and chronicled the makings of giants like Sonic Youth and Borbetomagus. After running the now-defunct free tape label Dadaist Tapes, Mertens comes with a release of his own: No Mathematics, the first record collab between KRAAK and Feeding Tube…
Eidetic
American singer-songwriter, poet, and photographer Thomas Meluch, known musically as Benoît Pioulard, returns with his most structured and vocal release to date. Titled »Eidetic,« a word denoting the ability to recall mental images with extraordinarily rich precision, the album presents unprecedented clarity and vitality for Benoît Pioulard. To access its thematic ground, Meluch looked inward with an affinity towards the people he loves during a period marked by his move from Seattle to Brooklyn…
El Pasaje Del Aumento
*300 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* "El Pasaje del Aumento" is a collection of syncopated rhythms for hypnotic slow dance. An accident of oppressive atmospheres with a humorous sense of rhythm and composition, which moves between downtempo, African rhythms and dub. With a certain oriental softness, it introduces you into a state of enchantment, spell... a hypnotic and mysterious restlessness, almost uncomfortable. Sentuhlà squeezes his Yamaha Rm1x on this second album, creating …
Forget The Curse
"Troth is unknown colours, mist-soaked dreamscapes, strange misshapen cities belonging to forgotten lands. Troth is also a pop duo, though not of the kind nowadays subjugated by the algorithm. Forget the Curse is the group’s best demonstration yet that somewhere in the murky fields between song and sound, there is a lot of untilled soil. There are elements from previous recordings here: the diaphanous synth-pop of Oak Corridor; the bleary hypnagogic ambience of Flaws in the Glass and Small Movem…
The Box
*In process of stocking* "The Box" is a collection of the earliest and perhaps most cherished recordings by UK producer Dennis Huddleston, better known as 36. Written between 2005 and 2012, it compiles the albums Hypersona (2009), Hollow (2010) and Lithea (2012) into a 6LP boxset, alongside a bonus LP of exclusive and unreleased tracks titled Orphans. Originally written as a triptych, The Box showcases an incredibly eclectic, deeply emotional range of tracks, bridged together by that optimistic …
Hidden Parasites
*100 copies limted edition. In process of stocking* "Hidden Parasites is a collection of electronic pieces pretty minimal and simple for those I tried to conserve the intensity of harsh and abrasive noise and the subtlety and narrativity of electroacoustic compositions. Hidden Parasites is an immersive work into subtle high feedbacks, destroyed samples, bass drones and weird raw recordings. It’s not meditative, but all the tracks explore modulation and change into a range of long durations where…
Draw Agreement
*200 copies limted edition.* A spatiotemporal synthesis of Coppice’s auditory and musical experiments (2009-2022) with custom, prepared, and modified musical instruments. This 3CD set abridges Coppice’s first three studies, artificially inserts them into the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, WI, and binaurally captures their diffusion across Elastic’s CLEAT (Chicago Laboratory for Electroacoustic Theatre), a 16-channel 96-speaker sound system.
A nesting time capsule that cyclesFolded time and …
End of an Era
*300 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Ferns Recordings presents End of an Era by Christoph Heeman. Recorded and mixed 1999 - 2021
Ἡσυχασμός
*300 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* "These two pieces were recorded in Paris in December of 2017 at the request of Banned Productions who then released them as a cassette. However, only very few copies of the tape were made and distributed, which is the reason for this new edition, mastered for the occasion by Paul Lavigne at Kontrast Mastering. The cover drawing was copied by hand from the original cover art and screen-printed by Charlotte at ZYX Éditions (Bretoncelles, Basse …
Stakes
Philipp Matalla lives and works in the triangle of Halle, Leipzig and Berlin, in Germany. He has previously released music on labels such as Optimo Music, KANN and Kashual Plastik. His new album on Meakusma delves into some of the themes that have so far defined his work, this time increasing the tension between moments of musical harshness and flickers of introspection, ease and downright beauty. Matalla aims not for perfection, instead deploying the listener's sense of imagination. His work to…
Nona 10''
Tip! *10" clear vinyl version* "Nona" takes inspiration from a case of xenoglossy - the ability to speak in an unlearned and unheard foreign language, often associated with past-life recall, states of trance or hypnosis and mediumship - discovered in Great Britain around the early Thirties when a woman in state of trance expressed herself in a language which was recognized as ancient egyptian. This voice from the past was called "Nona" or "The One Without a Name". The music has obviously much in…